It's been a sad life.

People sometimes accuse me of hating The Spice Girls because they're popular; of hating Keanu Reeves because he's so darned handsome; of doubting TV psychics because I fear the unknown.

Having been originally exposed to it phonetically, I figured the word "ineffectual" was spelled with an "a" as the third letter and that was the slip which had me believing for sometime that my editor and friend of several years felt sorry about my incapacity for intimacy rather than thinking of me as an awkward, clammy, aging schlep with an email address and more time on my hands than pointless semen to milk from my drawers.

inaffectual-

adj. meaning lacking the instincts to nurture or be nurtured; existing without any love.

With difficulty I bring up the next, seeming non-sequitur of a point -- money.

What could be more popular and mainstream than that?

And yet as surely as I have brought it up, so here will come the root of skepticism from the chestnut gallery -- "Where-oh-where is your tremendous wad now that money is such a big trend, Mr. Too Hip for the Trends?" Indeed with America's economy booming and the job-market over-flowing with high-paying, and highly rewarding work for people of my ethnicity and temperament in particular; with deconstructionism at a would-be status-quo, so to speak; I'm an intelligent, well educated man just out of grade school, so what the hell? "What gives?" you might say to yourselves. During our last phone argument, I even thought I maybe heard a hint from my ex-wife, Ally McBeal, in the direction of a reconciliation (Ha! I WISH!).

But let's cut the nonsense here. I'm in agony. I can't quite make a new meal out of a can of asparagus every hour.

(I remember the wedding well. Ally paid for it).

And yet I can't help thinking.

Now, in spite of several resplendent sources of nostalgia and faulty vocabularies on downers.

What in the world is this? How have we gotten so materialistic? I'm not interested in rebellion for the sake of publicity, or legalities, but now just keep your vegetables in their bags for a second and hear me loud and clear -- I like Leonardo DiCaprio! I think he's a real brain-box with tremendous taste in trousers, and I wonder if he's got any bisexual sisters. And while I respect the talent and innovation of The Spice Girls, it just isn't my thing. I'm just not a Spice Guy. I can see that Keanu is extremely versatile (who can't?) and that Tom Cruise is certainly dark and threatening enough to play the fiercest amoral vampire to appear on screen since Blackula (uh, excuse me. I may be out of touch, but even I've seen The Vampire Called 'Stat; us Anne Rice maniacs just had to acknowledge what a surprise success that role was for Cruise in theory); in spite of all this I just can't be that fan. I'm popularity impotent.

And no, I wouldn't be able to bring myself to take back that former life of thrills, chills and pills with our pouty, over the edge, free-loving Monroe of the 90s, Ally McBeal. Not after the way she spoke to my new monkey girl cunt-bag in court.

I walk my own dog, I live on the square; a proud man not just in spite of my hardships, but instead of them.

Go in peace.